The present invention relates generally to the transfer and use of information which may involve coding and/or decoding of the information. The information may be encoded in a signal and/or applied to objects. The invention also relates to objects having machine-readable coded information, to encoding objects with machine-readable information, to reading coded information from the objects, and to decoding coded information read from the objects and utilizing information obtained therefrom. The objects may be disc-like objects such as gambling chips, coins and tokens, and other objects such as production line components, commercial paper, currency, credit cards and food and consumer products. The information may be utilized for counting, identifying, denominating, dating, and/or pricing the objects, inventorying and/or for other purposes such as managing operations involving the use of the objects. More particularly, the invention relates to casino gambling chips and to methods and apparatus for automatically obtaining information relating to the chips and for utilizing the information obtained for purposes such as chip counting, chip identification, eliminating counterfeit chip losses, and chip, cash and casino operation management.
The invention disclosed herein has wide application to encoding, decoding and information transfer and use in connection with many types of objects and for many purposes. For example, the invention may be used with objects including, but not limited to the following: disc-like (i.e., generally flat, and generally round, elliptical or multi-sided) objects such as gambling chips, coins, tokens, etc.; generally circularly-shaped objects such as vehicle wheels and tires; commercial paper (checks, securities, etc.) and currency; products such as consumer products including food products sold in supermarkets, drugstores, hardware stores, etc.; labels and glass, paperboard, plastic and wrapped containers, etc., for many products including consumer products; etc. The invention may be used for purposes including, but not limited to the following: identification; object value (currency, gambling chip, token or security denomination, product price and/or cost, etc.); object counting; manufacturing purposes such as inventory control, mold or machine identification, location (plant, division, etc) identification, date information, etc. The invention is also widely applicable to many operations, activities and environments of use. However, the invention and its background are described herein in an exemplary sense primarily with respect to gambling chips and gambling establishments. It is to be understood, however, that it is not intended to limit the invention and its application to gambling chips, gambling operations and activities.
Revenues from gambling operations at a casino are produced by exchanging customers' money for gambling chips and providing gambling games for the customers so that they can wager their chips. Because of the house odds and the emotions involved in gambling, a casino shows a profit by winning back the chips. The essence of the casino's operations and revenues revolves around the casino's gambling chips. A task that requires considerable time, effort and care in the casino business is counting these chips, which is typically done after completing each operating shift, etc. Chip counting by denomination, in association with counting the cash received for the sale of chips, enables the casino to determine the approximate amount of money taken in at any gambling table, as well as by all or groups of tables in a given time period, and to monitor particular gambling tables or operators. Chip counting also enables a casino to determine the total number of chips available for play in the casino at a given time to ensure that a minimum number of chips are always available for play. By counting chips periodically, the casino can also determine the approximate number of chips which are either lost or taken as souvenirs over a given time period. This information may be used for planning purposes to ensure that the casino will always have an adequate supply of chips and for cash management purposes to determine the amount of money made or lost by the casino due to the loss of theft of chips and due to counterfeit chips.
Recently, efforts have been made to automate chip counting. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,983,646 and 4,026,309 (both of Howard) issued Oct. 5, 1976 and May 31, 1977, respectively, which disclose automatic counting of chips in chip racks independently of each other or by denomination.
Some operations, however, are still not automated. For example, detection of countefeit and damaged chips or chips belonging to another casino is done visually. Although there have been efforts to provide chips with means so that different types of chips can visually be easily and quickly identified, the chips are still visually inspected. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,350,802 (Segel) issued Nov. 7, 1967; 3,953,932 (Graves) issued May 4, 1976; 3,968,582 (Jones) issued July 13, 1976; 4,435,911 (Jones) issued Mar. 13, 1984, and U.S. Pat. Nos. Des. 232,367, 237,724 and 240,053 (all of Garaventa) issued Aug. 13, 1974, Nov. 18, 1975 and May 25, 1976, respectively. It is known to provide chips with means so that the presence of the chips can automatically be detected. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,968,582 (Jones) and U.S. Pat. No. 3,766,452 (Burpee et al.) issued Oct. 16, 1973.
It is also known to provide tokens with codes which can automatically be read from the faces of tokens. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,410,845 (Snell et al.) issued Nov. 12, 1946; 2,983,354 (Ember et al.) issued May 9, 1961; 3,171,020 (Lord) issued Feb. 23, 1975; 3,926,291 (Burke et al.) issued Dec. 16, 1975; and 4,371,071 (Abedor et al.) issued Feb. 1, 1983. As to other objects, it is known to apply codes to the surfaces of containers and packages, for example, for identification, price or inventory purposes. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,643,068 (Mohan et al.) issued Feb. 15, 1972; and 4,449,042 (Hampson et al.) issued May 15, 1984.
There remains a need, however, for apparatus and methods for automatically obtaining information from objects, particularly disc-like objects such as gambling chips, and particularly in real time. With respect to gambling chips, there is a need to obtain more information relating to the chips and to casino management operations involving them, and to process such information in real time without interrupting or interfering with normal gambling activities. Similar needs exist for obtaining information from many other objects and processing same.